~ Acquired Brain Injury (ABI): from the acute hospital to early rehabilitation – more on: www.CaringforPadraig.org and www.ansaol.ie

TheDutchman

The ‘routine’ in the morning can take some time, especially if you’ve got it. And it’s nice to have it. No rush. Nobody waiting. No knock on the door. Yet, we got the three meals in, the Stehbett, the Viva la MotoMed (remember that one?) – for the legs and for the arms (!), we went out twice – the first time we were just outside the door when it started to rain so we went straight back in, we watched the silliest German TV programme wondering how they have the cheek to do stuff like this, and I read out loud the next few pages of the guidebook to Alaska.

Cathal Murray is still on holidays it seems (how many holidays do they get at RTÉ???) so it was another Sunday morning with Carol Moran on the Weekend on One playing beautiful music. One of the first songs she played in the morning was The Dutchman. When I heard it, it stopped me right in my tracks and I texted her this. – Earlier in the year, a brilliant documentary was broadcast on Tipperary man Liam Clancy which is really worth watching (and in which he reveals that Bob Dylan stole his girlfriend).

When we went for a walk today, we saw what looked like a new telephone booth. Who on earth would bother putting up a new telephone booth, I thought. So we went to have a look. Turned out that what looked like a telephone booth (Telefonzelle) was, in fact, a book exchange (Bücherzelle). Isn’t that ingenious: the idea is that you can bring your books or CDs and leave them there for others to take it. Volunteers check regularly to make sure that the place is kept in order.

In case you were wondering: we still got no acknowledgement of the receipt of our letters to the Attorney General or the Governor, never mind an answer.

But today, I won’t worry about that. Because I’m tired. In a good way.

Today’s German Music TipJohannes Oerding, Alles brennt. Zwischen schwarzen Wolken seh’ ich ein kleines bisschen Blau…Alles wird gut… This song got almost 5m hits – where have I been? Just heard it for the first time…What’s hotLet us go to the banks of the ocean
What’s coldLong ago I used to be a young man
The German word/phrase/verse of the dayDes Teufels liebstes Möbelstück ist die lange Bank.